This paper proposes a new measure of skills mismatch that combines information about skill proficiency, self-reported mismatch and skill use. The theoretical foundations underling this measure allow identifying minimum and maximum skill requirements for each occupation and to classify workers into three groups, the well-matched, the under-skilled and the over-skilled. The availability of skill use data further permit the computation of the degree of under and overusage of skills in the economy. The empirical analysis is carried out using the first wave of the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) and the findings are compared across skill domains, labour market status and countries.

One of the most salient features of developing economies is the existence of a large informal sector. This paper uses quantitative theory to study the dynamic implications of informality on wage inequality, human capital accumulation, child labor and long-run growth. Our model can generate transitory informality equilibria or informality-induced poverty traps. Its calibration reveals that the case for the poverty-trap hypothesis is strong: although informality serves to protect low-skilled workers from extreme poverty in the short-run, it prevents income convergence between developed and developing nations in the long run. Sudden elimination of informality would induce severe welfare losses for several generations on the transition path. Hence, we examine the effectiveness of different development policies to exit the poverty trap. Our numerical experiments show that using means-tested education subsidies is the most cost-effective single policy option. However, for longer time horizons, or as the economy gets closer to the poverty trap threshold, combining means-tested education and wage subsidies is even more effective.

This paper estimates the impact of college teaching on academic achievement and on labor market outcomes using administrative data from Bocconi University (Italy) matched with Italian tax records. The estimation exploits the random allocation of students to teachers in a fixed sequence of compulsory courses. We find that good teaching matters more for the labor market than for academic performance. Moreover, the professors who are best at improving the academic achievement of their best students are also the ones who boost their earnings the most. On the contrary, for low ability students the academic and labor market returns of teachers are largely uncorrelated. We also find that professors who are good at teaching high ability students are often not the best teachers for the least able ones. These findings can be rationalized in a model where teaching is a multi-dimensional activity with each dimension having differential returns on the students’ academic learning and labor market success.

Using a matched employer–employee data-set, we analyze how workforce diversity associates with the productivity of firms in Denmark, following two main econometric routes. In the first one, we estimate a standard Cobb–Douglas function, calculate the implied total factor productivity and relate the latter to diversity statistics in a second stage. This reduced-form approach allows us to identify which types of labor heterogeneity appear to descriptively matter. In the second approach, we move toward a richer production function specification, which takes different types of labor as inputs and that allows for flexible substitution patterns, and possible quality differences between types. Both methods show that workforce diversity in ethnicity is negatively associated with firm productivity. The evidence regarding diversity in education is mixed.

This paper analyzes the social welfare effects of tax-benefit reforms in a framework integrating endogenous labor supply and unemployment. We adopt an ordinal approach to social welfare comparisons by searching for "socially desirable" reforms that would improve social welfare for an entire class of social welfare functions. In the model, there is a discrete distribution of individuals' productivities and individuals are heterogeneous with respect to leisure preferences (or disability of work). Labor supply decisions are limited to the participation decision. Unemployment is modeled in a search and matching framework with individual wage bargaining. For the social welfare analysis, the model is calibrated for Switzerland. Starting from a situation with an unemployment benefit scheme, the introduction of in-work benefits is shown to be a "socially desirable" reform: it would be unanimously preferred to the current situation according to all social welfare functions based on the criteria of Pareto, anonymity, and the principle of transfers. This result holds for two different types of preference heterogeneity (leisure preferences or disability of work) and also for the case where job search effort cannot be monitored.

Among the techniques to address the problem of unit-nonresponse in surveys, short follow-up surveys for nonrespondents have not (yet) been a strong tradition. They are however promising ways to document and possibly correct for non-response bias, so that it should be of interest to put aside a small part of the overall budget to implement them. This contribution relates to a longer series of experiences from non-respondent surveys as follow-ups of long face-to-face general social surveys in Switzerland. It shows the great opportunities offered, but also the challenges that have to be faced when opting for this approach.

The social stratification that takes place during the transition out of high school is traditionally explained with theoretical frameworks such as status attainment and social reproduction. In our paper, we suggest the cumulative dis/advantage hypothesis as an alternative theoretical and empirical approach that explains this divergence in institutional pathways as the result of the dynamic interplay between social institutions (in our case, schools) and individuals’ resources. We use data from the NLSY79 in order to compute institutional pathways (defined by educational and occupational status) of 9200 high school graduates. Optimal Matching Analysis and Cluster Analysis generated a typology of life course pathways. Our results show that both ascribed characteristics and students’ high school characteristics and resources are predictors of post-high school pathways.

It is widely known that informal contacts and networks constitute a major advantage when searching for a job. Unemployed people are likely to benefit from such informal contacts, but building and sustaining a network can be particularly difficult when out of employment. Interventions that allow unemployed people to effectively strengthen their networking capability could as a result be promising. Against this background, this article provides some hints in relation to the direction that such interventions could take. First, on the basis of data collected on a sample of 4,600 newly-unemployed people in the Swiss Canton of Vaud, it looks at the factors that influence jobseekers’ decisions to turn to informal contacts for their job search. The article shows that many unemployed people are not making use of their network because they are unaware of the importance of this method. Second, it presents an impact analysis of an innovative intervention designed to raise awareness of the importance of networks which is tested in a randomized controlled trial setting.

On the basis of the analysis of qualitative interviews in Western Germany, it has been argued that personal relationships have a strong impact on individuals' family formation processes and childbearing intentions. Persons who influence individuals' childbearing choices were identified. Strong ties, such as among core family members (i.e., parents and siblings), are an important contributing factor, but the authors are also able to show that weak ties, such as those among colleagues and acquaintances, need to be considered when examining social influence on family formation processes. Apart from single network partners, influential groups of persons have been identified. Such groups serve as a comparative standard regarding the timing of having one's first child and subsequent children.

To examine potential associations of the history of lifetime smoking and smoking cessation with cognitive function in the elderly. In a population-based cohort study of older adults in Saarland, Germany, a detailed lifetime history of smoking was obtained using standardised questionnaires. Cognitive function was assessed with a validated telephone-based instrument (COGTEL) at the five-year follow-up in a subsample of n = 1,697 participants with a baseline age >65 years. Multiple linear regression models were employed to predict cognitive performance, adjusting for potential confounding factors. Ever-smokers with a higher cumulative dose of smoking in pack-years scored lower in the cognitive assessment than never-smokers, with the association being more pronounced in current smokers than in former smokers. In fully adjusted models, current smokers with 21–40 pack-years scored 4.06 points lower (95 % CI −7.18 to −0.94) than never-smokers. In former smokers, a longer time since smoking cessation was associated with higher scores in the cognitive test with reference to current smokers, even after adjustment for pack-years. Former smokers who had quit for more than 30 years scored 4.23 points higher (95 % CI 1.75 to 6.71) than current smokers. Dose–response-relationships of cognitive function with cumulative dose of smoking as well as with time since smoking cessation were substantiated by restricted cubic splines regression. Our results support suggestions that smokers are at an increased risk for cognitive impairment in older age; that the risk increases with duration and intensity of smoking, and subsides with time after smoking cessation.

In the population history of European pre-industrial population, late marriage and high level of final celibacy are seen as the most important components of demographic regimes, avoiding an excessive demographic pressure on scarce resources. While during the last decades the scientific approach emphasized the study of individual life trajectories, life transitions are still often considered isolated from each other. In this paper, we look at marriage from an original perspective, as one event on the road to adulthood, whom the position in a given life course is related with other steps like leaving home, establishing a household, and the access to legitimate reproduction through a first birth. Sequence analysis is definitively the appropriate tool for a holistic and integrative approach of the various roads young men and women could take to enter into adulthood. Working on nineteenth century rural regions in East Belgium, we used TraMineR to reconstruct sequences and identified four clusters both for males and females. To complete this exploratory data-mining with an explanatory point of view, we proceeded to univariate ANOVA-like discrepancy analyses of the life trajectories, and then grew a regression tree for our sequences. Results show high level of complexities in rural, supposedly traditional societies, an exercise of individual agency in tolerant but also influent structures that resulted in a high diversity of personal trajectories and a global respect of the social order.

This book gives a general view of sequence analysis, the statistical study of successions of states or events. It includes innovative contributions on life course studies, transitions into and out of employment, contemporaneous and historical careers, and political trajectories. The approach presented in this book is now central to the life-course perspective and the study of social processes more generally. This volume promotes the dialogue between approaches to sequence analysis that developed separately, within traditions contrasted in space and disciplines. It includes the latest developments in sequential concepts, coding, atypical datasets and time patterns, optimal matching and alternative algorithms, survey optimization, and visualization. Field studies include original sequential material related to parenting in 19th-century Belgium, higher education and work in Finland and Italy, family formation before and after German reunification, French Jews persecuted in occupied France, long-term trends in electoral participation, and regime democratization. Overall the book reassesses the classical uses of sequences and it promotes new ways of collecting, formatting, representing and processing them. The introduction provides basic sequential concepts and tools, as well as a history of the method. Chapters are presented in a way that is both accessible to the beginner and informative to the expert.